Wow, a giant!  Not quite.  Don’t be misled, those are actually very small houses…

Like doll’s houses?  Exactly like doll’s houses…  Collected by the British artist Rachel Whiteread over two decades and kept in her basement ever since, the doll’s houses now get their chance to be centre stage.

Oh, right.  Why?   Well, they form the most atmospheric of exhibits at the inventive Psycho Buildings show on now at the Hayward Gallery.  The exhibition has given a selection of artists free rein to do what they like with spaces in the brutalist building and, so the curators hope, blur the boundaries between art and architecture.

Let me guess then, no-one’s treated it seriously and all the exhibits are all a bit of a joke?  Oh, you cynic!  Well, let’s just say that some of the exhibits come dangerously close to some of the gimmick-led Turbine Hall installations- suns, slides, cracks – that near-neighbour Tate Modern has been dining out on in recent years.  Amongst more sober works, Psycho Buildings features a miniature boating lake by the Austrian group Gelitin and a “a habitable platform that floats in the air” (i.e. a big bubble) by the Argentine Tomas Saraceno.

And Whiteread?  She sounds familiar…  Well, she should.  A Turner Prize winner – the first female winner in fact – Whiteread shot to a degree of mainstream notoriety with her House sculpture and has since made numerous moving works using similar methods, including the Vienna Holocaust Memorial (see, respectively, both below). 

A new direction of sorts, the doll’s house exhibit – Place – is no less poignant than its predecessors and is available to view at the Hayward until 25th August.

* Well, it’s been a wee bit longer than a fortnight since the last instalment, so a slight adjustment…

This is the second in an occasional series on the right and proper way to behave in an art gallery.  But I really made a terrible error before.  Because this is Art Gallery Etiquette 101, lesson 1.  Really, this is it…

Because you can get away with a lot in a modern art gallery.  Not least in an exhibition part-curated by Tracey Emin:

Laugh at the lamest watercolours in the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition?  Yeah, the Academy’s down with the kids these days.

Discuss the intimate details of your private life on your mobile?  Yep, if you don’t mind a frown or two from the home counties set.

Audibly break wind in Gallery IV?  Well the guards will probably be too afraid you’re doing some of that new-fangled ‘performance art’ to throw you out…

But the one thing you can’t do – which you really, really can’t do – is this:

Royal Academy Smash: visitor smashes artwork

Still, if you do, at least you won’t have been the first…

Museum trip man arrested for smashing Qinq vases

Read the papers: modern life is symbolised by the recalcitrant mosquito swarm of the paparazzi; the beleaguered celebrity constant prey to the hordes of vicious fucks with the telephoto lenses.  And well, yeah, they are.  But then they also have their bodyguards, expensive lawyers, millions of pounds in their back pockets from selling the non-pap photos of their firstborn, plus an apparently incurable desire to eat in restaurants that happen to have hordes of those vicious paparazzi fucks outside.  You win some, you lose some.

Tate Modern’s sporadically fascinating new photography exhibition – Street & Studio: An Urban History of Photography - tells another story though: the control that a photographer can wield over the lives of those who have neither resources nor power.  This mastery is a truly double-edged sword.  The documentary evidence of cruelty, war, poverty and pestilence has often proved a vital catalyst for social change.  On the other hand, the intrusion into the personal misery (or even just mundanity) of those whom are otherwise nameless, penniless and occasionally also oblivious to their role as subject, raises some weighty ethical concerns.

This is an exhibition of numerous intertwining narratives.  As with so many photography shows, the sheer quantity of images makes it difficult to absorb all that you see; interest levels ebb and flow palpably throughout.  Moreover though, while its overall theme – the impact of street photography and its subsequent dialectic with the traditional studio shot – is addressed somewhat patchily, the real value of the exhibition is the freedom it provides for us to join our own dots between themes across contrasting eras.  There have already been insightful reviews of the full show in both the Guardian and Observer, so here I shall concentrate instead on the theme that jumped out at me on first viewing: the issue of photography and consent, informed or otherwise.

The image above is by Walker Evans, one of a series of Subway Portraits that he took in New York between 1938 and 1941.  The selection of these images shown in Street and Studio is suitably captivating, and should be of particular interest to the thousands of tube-surfers who will find their introspective air familiar even many decades on.  They provide an obvious contrast to the work of Wolfgang Tillmans (below) in the same room: staged images that seem artificial not so much for the use of the photographer’s friends as models but because of their sheer clarity of vision.  The faces-in-armpits close-cropping is true enough, but the London Underground’s perennial grime can rarely have looked so primary-coloured or radiant (I suspect Transport for London may have rustled up a few brand new trains when they heard about the Tillmans project).

Tellingly, Evans decided not to make his Depression-era portraits publicly available until 1966, when he published them in the book Many are Called.  The reason?  Well, although Evans never received true acclaim until a critical re-evaluation in the 1960s, I suspect that the manner in which the portraits were taken may have influenced their long-delayed release.  Because, believe it or not, Evans took these pictures with a camera hidden under his raincoat and a shutter release fed down his sleeve.  The (predominantly female) subjects, had their covert surveillance been revealed, would surely have been shocked, angry and perhaps also a little disturbed by the experience.  The faces on show suggest many have problems that help make them such intriguing subjects, but probably also likely to be less than forgiving victims of this kind of prank.

At least Evans appears to have had some misgivings about his methods.  In one of the earlier rooms, the Dutch photographer Ed van der Elsken provides us with this incredible explanation of his work: “I followed this babe around for a while.  She knew I was doing it, and didn’t like it one bit.”  Now I read the quote before I saw the photos, and it sounded a little cheeky, perhaps flirtatious, as if the subject might really be enjoying all the attention but trying to pretend otherwise. 

The photos proved conclusively otherwise.  I can’t track down the images online, so you’re going to have to take my word for it (or, better, go see the show), but they are anything but flirtatious.  Taken in Hong Kong in the 1950s, with all the colonial-era associations that suggests, the woman concerned looks not just as if she “didn’t like it”, but as if she’s about to burst into hot tears of angry frustration.  This is not mere voyeurism, this was a case of prolonged harassment with a distinctly sexual edge.  The pictures made me feel genuinely queasy.

Art has a right to push boundaries, perhaps even a duty to do so, but this was nothing more than bullying.  The oppression of the relatively powerless by the relatively powerful.  Male against female, white against non-white, arrogant ‘artist’ against unsuspecting civilian.  Whatever justification the late Mr. van der Elsken came up with for his behaviour in this instance, he was wrong.

Unlike the photos themselves though, the issue is not black and white.  I would happily condemn van der Elsken, but feel strange reluctance to do the same to Evans.  Rationalising that distinction is difficult – is the overtly non-consensual objectification inherently more despicable, or have I simply been swayed by the emotional response captured on film?  Is the potential anger of Evans’s subjects any less valid for being unrealised?  Or does his greater sensitivity mean we should give him some credit or leeway?  I struggle to navigate the shades of grey here in any systematic way, but I know where my instincts lead me.

We are now used to never-ending debates about the privacy of high-profile public figures.  Street and Studio also provides us with a few celebrity shots – more often than not extravagantly posed – but the glimpses of ordinary lives captured for posterity are far more interesting.  Threaded together they reveal a developing history of the downtrodden being made a spectacle of, literally.  Swiss vagrants, French chimneysweeps, the corpses of miners and murder victims, eyes-down city workers forever with too little time; the destitute, the defiant, the mentally ill, and a single upset woman stalked around Hong Kong.  Even allowing for the occasional staged shot, many here will have had little opportunity to provide what we would now describe as informed consent.  And, of those that did, fewer still would have anticipated that one day they would end up on a wall in the world’s most-visited gallery.

This is not a call for artistic censorship, not even gentle self-censorship.  But due to the flexibility, instant capture and mimetic accuracy of the medium, photography has a responsibility to those that it represents that simply does not rest so heavily upon the painter or the sculptor.  Indeed all those that wield a camera do so with a degree of power, and that power can be an incredible force for good.  But it is not just the paparazzi that can take advantage of their subjects.  There has been much talk recently of a democratisation of photography in the age of flickr, so let us hope that modern photographers are already less aristocratic in their behaviour than some of those represented in Street and Studio.  It certainly should not be impossible to reconcile revealing portraiture and reportage – each of enormous value – with a respect for those featuring that precludes exploitation.

Lewes Wickes Hine: Self-portrait with Newsieboy

I’m a little embarrassed by how few female artists this blog has featured in recent weeks, so here’s a Picture of the Week by arguably Britain’s greatest living artist.  No tokenism here though, this is stunning…

Who? Bridget Riley

What? Arrest 1, 1965

Where? Strangely enough, I don’t know, despite spending some time trying to find out (I shall happily add details of its home if anyone can let me know).  I do wonder if there’s something about abstract art that gives these images self-perpetuating lives of their own – on the internet at least it becomes very difficult to find the actual resting place of such works rather than just countless representations.  I’m not helping either.

However, while I don’t know if this work will feature, I am happy to point those curious to see more in the direction of the major Riley retrospective on now in Paris.  As far as I’m aware, the show at Le Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris will be the first major retrospective since this Tate show a few years ago.  If it’s even half as good, I can heartily recommend it.

When? The Paris show is open all summer and closes on the 14th of September.

Why? Well, for a start, only art curmudgeons can dislike Riley’s Op Art masterpieces.  And seeing them in person, with all the visual slipperiness and aloof charisma they exude, is always a treat.  Moreover, unlike countless other artists we could all think of, Riley’s recent output is still just as powerful as her earlier works – a bonus sample of her (colourful!) style from around the mid-’90s onwards is provided below – and unlike some (cough, Roy Liechtenstein, cough) she has managed to innovate through the gentle probing of self-imposed limitations and still create something fresh each time.

Riley fans might also be interested in a very rare interview recently conducted by the Guardian here.

To the best of my knowledge, this is only the second English language review of the Prado’s ambitious Goya in Times of War exhibition thus far.  As such, I feel the weight of such an important duty rest heavily on my shoulders – I only hope I can do both you, my dear reader, and the exhibition justice.

First and foremost, some (highly significant) context.  Madrid’s magnificent Prado gallery already houses the greatest Goya collection in the world, but this is its first retrospective proper in over a decade.  The occasion?  Nothing less than the 200-year anniversary of the most evocative date in Spanish history: the 2nd of May 1808. 

This famous uprising against French oppressors – not to mention the bloody revenge exacted the following day – retains legendary status for the Spanish people and inspired some of Goya’s greatest work.  However, as we shall come to see, our friend Goya was somewhat more equivocal in his treatment of the events than many of his compatriots.

Coming to the Prado, let alone this enormous exhibition of my favourite artist of all time, I was (inevitably) unfairly saddling the artwork contained therein with some huge, huge hopes.  As a friend of mine is fond of reminding me, he read Great Expectations once, but it wasn’t as good as he expected it to be.  But, let me say now – if you get the chance, make it to Madrid asap and treat yourself to some of the greatest art galleries in the world, of which the Prado is very much first among equals.

Goya at the Prado

To the point though: for me, Goya is the greatest artist the world has ever seen.  But, and here’s the rub, this exhibition was not the greatest that I – let alone the world – has ever seen.  Why?

Well, I’m not going to give you too much unnecessary detail on the choice of paintings and layout here – the Time review and the official site can fill in those gaps – but a very simple thought occurs.  Great exhibitions tend to fall into two camps: the exhaustively-comprehensive or the tightly-focused.  These options often lead naturally to either the grand retrospective (i.e. Louise Bourgeois at Tate Modern recently) or the concept exhibition, where the artworks are selected not necessarily because of their merits as such, but primarily because they illustrate a particular style or time period or theme or argument.  A good recent example of the latter would be The Painting of Modern Life at the Hayward which, despite its inconsistency in terms of quality, stuck steadfast to its interesting concept all the way through: painting inspired by photography.  Of course, the rare exhibition – I’m thinking of From Russia at the Royal Academy – can be both comprehensive and maintain an overarching theme, but such perfect combinations of the two are few and far between.

Sadly, Goya in Times of War is not one of them.  To be honest, the exhibition’s title should have been the first warning.  You’ll note the careful imprecision used.  It is not ‘Goya and War’, or ‘Goya on War’ or even ‘War in the work of Goya’ – no, it is Goya in times of war.  And the reason?  Well, in doing so, the curators give themselves an escape clause.  Despite hinting at the martial focus of the exhibition – and of course the two great May canvases provide the beating heart of the exhibition – they allow themselves the wiggle room to sneak in all manner of paintings that arguably detract from an overall theme rather than nourish it.

After all, few of Goya’s years were spent in times of peace.  From some rough and ready research I’ve conducted, of the impressive 82 years that Goya was on this earth, Spain was at war (at home or abroad) for 54 of those.  That’s two-thirds of a lifetime spent in conditions of war – no surprise then that the terrible impact of such bloodshed is felt so vividly in his works.  But, given the incredible scope that allowed the curators to include almost all of his output (around half of Goya’s peacetime years occurred before he stopped painting designs for royal tapestries and truly joined the royal court as a painter) the lead theme just seems misleading.  After all, grateful though I was to see them, why include the two Majas (nude and clothed) in the exhibition, but keep the haunting Black Paintings elsewhere in the Prado when they surely demonstrate a far greater nihilistic influence from times of war?  (Unless, of course, the ever-circulating rumours about doubts as to their authenticity are true, in which case the Prado should be making its position clear immediately rather than just ignoring the issue.  Still, I digress…)

Great Deeds! Against the Dead!

Anyway, a slightly tenuous theme is not the greatest crime a curator can commit, but it is unfortunate here.  When you have the greatest collection of paintings by the world’s greatest artist, you don’t need to crowbar them all in together under the pretence of a particular angle, then exclude some that would happily enhance our understanding of the artist as a whole.  Sure, anyone stupid enough to visit a Goya exhibition like this and not complete their duties by visiting the other parts of the Prado featuring his works deserves their ignorance, but you don’t generally buy tickets to a major exhibition and expect to have to top up your experience elsewhere in the same gallery.

If there were a single simple improvement I could have made to the exhibition, then it would have been to have included every plate from the Disasters of War series.  As it was, a few scattered across a number of rooms was not really up to the task.  Of course, the impulse to only show original works is admirable, but if – and I would be seriously shocked if this was the case – the Prado somehow could not get hold of a full set of original prints, then even a room mixing reproductions with originals in order would have made for a fascinating insight.  After all, sticking an etching called This is Worse up on a wall without us being able to see what it is actually worse than (i.e. the two preceding plates) is just shoddy.

Anyway, enough grumpiness here.  Did I mention that the Prado is fantastic?  And that, despite its flaws, this exhibition was too?  Well, it is and was.  To get up close and personal with the wonderfully-restored Second of May and Third of May is an incredible privilege.  Their vivid colours now present across the entire canvases, you find not only the blunt horror of the works but also their looming beauty.  Even so, the two great paintings inevitably permit a rather shallow narrative (heroic Spaniards v. dastardly French) for those who seek it.  On the other hand, private etchings of the Disasters of War reveal the deeper truth: that warfare makes grimy villains of us all, perpetrator, spectator and victim.  And, of course, that victim can all too easily become perpetrator, perpetrator become victim and so on in vicious circularity.  If you take one lesson from Goya, it is surely that evil is a natural, human deed, as well as a supernatural, inhuman one. 

Ultimately, to have been fortunate enough to see so many great Goya works will remain in the memory for a very long time.  Who knows when I will next be able to make it to Madrid?  But, whenever the Prado decides to hold another Goya exhibition of this size, I’ll be the first one at the door.

I only hope they decide to come clean and have a Goya retrospective proper next time.  It is the least the great man deserves.

Brutalism - the ever-controversial, predominantly (but certainly not exclusively) British take on modernist architecture - has been kickstarting tenuously-topical debate yet again.  I already made a brief foray into the comments section on the following Guardian article, but in the days since I’ve realised there’s a wider cultural question I could raise that sits neatly enough within the raison d’etre of this here blog…

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/art/2008/06/dont_knock_brutalism.html

Now, I’m not even interested in arguing with those for whom the wind-battered, piss-stained, sludge-coloured concrete of most Brutalist architecture is nothing other than a turn-off.  This is architecture you almost certainly need to learn to love and, whether its through pilgrimage to Trellick Tower (above), the spacegarden-aquafuture-powerwalkways of the Barbican, or simply some highly-recommended purchases from the mighty People Will Always Need Plates, well, that’s for you and your inner Le Corbusier to wrangle with.

Instead, I unapologetically start from two premises that may or not be true:

1) Brutalist architecture has an aesthetic merit and architectural significance that deserves to be respected and, dare I say it, preserved for posterity.

2) That, speaking as someone who is yet to have the pleasure, (most) brutalist architecture makes for a terrible environment to live in.

So, if we accept these as true (and there are very strong dissenters for both points), where exactly does that leave us?

Firstly, you can’t – well, you shouldn’t – go knocking down buildings of enormous cultural significance just because the prevailing fashions dictate them ugly.  It wasn’t so long ago (less than 50 years in fact) that St. Pancras Station was destined for the wrecker’s ball, only to be saved for posterity at the eleventh hour and is now pretty much universally heralded for George Gilbert Scott’s disarming Gothic revivalist frontage. 

On the other hand, preserving architecture raises unique problems that, say, hoarding a previously-unsaleable Van Gogh until it transforms into a multi-million pound masterpiece doesn’t entail.  Architecture is, in short, high-maintenance.  Brutalist buildings often suffer from leaky roofs, claustrophobic, graffiti-inviting corridors and wind-battered, piss-stained, sludge-coloured concrete skins (did I mention that already?).  To expect people to live in what is\was predominantly social housing, but without the necessary investment and social infrastructure to support large, tightly-packed mini-communities, is simply inhumane.

So, what’s the solution here?  Well, as always with interesting questions, the solutions are none and many:  for British brutalism, sadly, there is no one-size-fits-all approach.  Some of these buildings have already been lost, and more seem likely to follow (even those that played host to some of Michael Caine’s finest moments) in the face of an undeniably and overwhelmingly hostile general public.  At the other extreme, in some areas, free market capitalism has unusually come to the rescue and ensured that private buyers with the wealth and wherewithal to purchase and maintain urban flats will ensure some brutalist architecture endures.  As a backlash will inevitably build against identikit Barratt housing estates sometime in the next million years (fingers crossed), I suspect they will have made a shrewd investment.

And for the remainder?  Well, yes, architecture is art indivisibly linked to its function.  So, in the instances where such buildings prove uninhabitable, let’s not abandon all hope.  Let us be – cue management-speak – proactive in seeking out suitable new purposes for these bold modern behemoths.  It worked for Tate Modern and, with the right motivation, the formula can work again.  A similar notion may have been mentioned with sarcasm elsewhere, but why not house a National Museum of Modernist Architecture in one of these brutes?  Heck, why not an International Museum…?

Indeed, let us shelter the oft-neglected and much-maligned, let us whisper life-affirming self-help-book quotes into the ears of our modernist heritage and, after carefully scrubbing the piss stains from the uncared-for concrete, let us find those ways to relaunch Britain’s brutalist past with new bravado and new-found purpose.

Who? Max Ernst.

What? Erm, untitled?  This is just (just!) a single page from Ernst’s collage-tastic, surreal novel Une Semaine de Bonte (or, for us monolinguists, A Week of Kindness).

Where? Available at all good bookshops…

Well, let’s be honest, some good bookshops.  If you’re really lucky.  Also available here on Amazon at a reduced price for now, but do try to patronise your local independent bookshop if at all possible (sorry, was that a bit preachy?).  They will find it published in an evergreen, ever-reliable Dover paperback (ISBN978-0486232522) and they will make your life happy when they do.

When? Erm, 9-6 weekdays, late night openings on Thursdays, or 24\7 if you prefer to shop online?

(Or, every hour of the day once you succumb and buy a copy…)

Why? Now, finally, here’s a question I may know how to answer.  Because the images are stunning, their impact having not diminished one jot in 80 years, both visually arresting and unexpectedly affecting.  More importantly though, because when you next have guests round you can simply fling this at them, turn the first page and leave them to it.  Gone forever are the days of endless entertaining of unwelcome visitors!  Also functions as an all-purpose gift that, for relative, lover or despised boss, will confuse the hell out of the recipient as they try to read numerous messages about your feelings towards them in the bizarre offerings on every page…

There are unique difficulties involved in coming face-to-face with one of the most significant paintings the world has ever seen.  As an art lover in Madrid this is a problem you’re going to face on a regular basis, but I still haven’t come up with a decent solution.  After all, when you’re gaping open-mouthed at the greatest painting of the 20th Century, no amount of looking is ever really going to be enough…

This is Picasso’s Guernica.  I suspect you may have seen it before:

And chances are, if you like art, you’ve already spent more time reading books about (or listening to people talk about, or maybe even reading people blog about) this painting than it is actually possible to spend in front of it without getting yourself arrested.  So how do you truly absorb this work without simply ticking it off your list?  Without it just being another tourist experience duly experienced?

Well, to be honest, I’m simply not sure you can.  And, if you try to do so, you’re probably just sticking your fingers in your ears to the fact that any great painting ends up defined as much by its context, by its critical reception, its political meaning, its own mythology of creation and provenance and analysis, as it does by its application of paint to canvas.

So, I have stood in front of Guernica – a moment of such common symbolic significance that its Reine Sofia home honestly sells certificate-postcards proclaiming ‘The Guernica Does Exist: I Have Seen It’ for you to self-sign! – and it was good.

And, standing there, in front of a painting that, despite all warnings, was simply bigger, more oppressively monochrome and more full of character than I could ever have been prepared for, is there anything at all meaningful I could add to the weight of cultural baggage already attached to it?

No, of course not.  But I’ll try anyway, to add my own tiny insight to the pile… 

Because if you find yourself like me, standing in front of the greatest painting of the century of your birth and struggling to find a way in, try this: take a look at the hands and feet.  All the anguish of Guernica is there, in every twist and turn and bloated clenching digit.

Who?  Pedro Ramirez Vazquez, Eduardo Terrazas, and Lance Wyman

What?  Mexico 1968 Olympics Poster

Where?  The V&A Museum of Childhood

When?  Now now now, and until 7 September 2008, as part of the seriously exciting-looking exhibition A Century of Olympic Posters.  I don’t know about you, but I’m really looking forward to seeing it…

Why?  Because it’s an op-art masterpiece (although also based upon traditional Mexican artwork) that looks just as visually powerful today as it must have done back then.  Significantly, the Mexican team were conscious that they did not have the cash to splash on architecture and the like that their predecessors as hosts had enjoyed.  They understood early on that graphic design was a cheap and powerful way to stamp a country’s identity on the Olympics instead.

And hey, there may even be a lesson for the multitude of knee-jerkers who sought to stick the boot into the London 2012 logo.  See here:

2012 Logo: “Give it a Chance”